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Washington Times

Washington Times

Por Julián Schvindlerman

  

Oslo’s collapse – 21/11/00

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The violence launched by Yasser Arafat at the end of September marked the end of the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. Its collapse, however, began at least half a decade ago. Oslo was mortally wounded the day the Palestinian leader issued his first inciteful message to an Arabic-speaking crowd; it staggered along during successive years
with each additional Palestinian violation; and took its last gasps with the terrorism committed by Islamic fundamentalists given the «green light» by Mr. Arafat.

All told, from the beginning of the peace process to just before the current confrontations, 237 Israeli civilians were killed and 2,824 were wounded by their Palestinian counterparts (as for soldiers, 97 were killed and 1,376 wounded). That is to say, the first heady years of
«peace» in Israel produced more casualties than during the previous 15 years of open conflict put together. Finally, at Camp David this July, by rejecting magnanimous Israeli terms and returning to Gaza without even having produced a counteroffer, Mr. Arafat placed Oslo in its coffin.

But the question left hanging in the air during these tense and tragic days is that of what, if any, responsibility the Israeli «peace camp» bears for this nightmarish turn of events? To have originally believed in Oslo’s original and ambitious promise of peace might have been
reasonable. To have given the PLO an opportunity to prove it had really turned over a new leaf could have been politically understandable – although perhaps still morally unacceptable. But to have clung to the peace process with messianic fervor and irrational zeal is nearly incomprehensible. Indeed, Oslo’s architects – professors Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak, along with politicians Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin – with the open support of nearly the entire camp of Israeli left-wing politicians – made a strategic decision to ignore the massive amount of evidence that something had gone terribly wrong with their Grand Experiment.

Why? As former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Dore Gold pointed out a few years ago, canceling the «Oslo project» during its early stages would have been for the Israeli left tantamount to burying its most central item of faith – that peaceful coexistence with a PLO-led Palestinian entity was a reasonable and achievable goal.

Were the signs really that difficult to see? Slaves of their own assumptions, the Israeli left chose to ignore – if not condone – PLO misconduct in the secure belief that mutual confidence would emerge with time; it did not. With the inexplicable infatuation many intellectuals and human rights advocates have for brutal dictatorships and irredentist movements, well-intentioned peace camp politicians projected their own post-nationalist ideals onto the Palestinians, seeing virtuous pacifists in those who were obviously holy warriors in hibernation.

Coming to terms with these truths, the honest observer is left with a tragic irony: that the leaders of Israel’s left – Oslo’s most loyal supporters – indeed bear at least partial responsibility for the agreement’s crumbling. Let there be no doubt: The assassins of the peace process are none other than Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian rock-throwers. The Israeli left should not be judged for wholeheartedly longing for the arrival of peace to this war-weary land, a hope held in the heart of every Israeli. But by negligently and intentionally choosing to ignore systematic and dangerous Palestinian violations, the left in essence created the framework for Oslo’s collapse.

Strategically, then, it was not the so-called «enemies of peace» who condemned Oslo to death, but its best friends. If, instead of rewarding Mr. Arafat every time he breached the accords, Israeli leaders had demanded that their peace partner honor his obligations and stick resolutely to the path of credible reconciliation, then perhaps a fall could have been avoided. Even if this policy had precipitated an earlier collapse of the process, at least Mr. Arafat and his henchmen today would not have the weapons, land, and infrastructure they are now turning against their «peace partner.»

And the mood of the Israeli right? Anyone who was repulsed by the sight of Israeli leaders embracing Mr. Arafat, who refused to accept the abject immorality of Western democracies and the Nobel Peace Prize committee in catapulting the most brutal kind of criminal to international fame and legitimacy as a «hero of peace,» despite an honest longing for peace for which the right is often denied credit, must accept all these facts with a heavy heart. Even during times of turmoil over the past seven years, most of those who stayed firmly outside Israel’s more dovish mainstream still couldn’t help wishing, deep down, that in some inexplicable, irrational -even magical- way, the process would somehow ultimately deliver the peace it promised. For these, consolation is perhaps best expressed in the words of Israeli writer Amnon Lord: «An epoch of lies and fraud has ended.»

Midstream

Midstream

Por Julián Schvindlerman

  

Yerushalayim versus Al-Quds – 10/00

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JULIAN SCHVINDLERMAN, a freelance journalist, holds an MA in Society and Politics of Israel from the International Rothberg School at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Middle East covers an area of roughly 15,000,000 square kilometers.(1) There, you can find a small country called Israel, which encompasses a space totaling 27,800 square kilometers. Its capital, Jerusalem, hardly fills 120 square kilometers. Within it is located the Old City, covering just one square kilometer. Inside the Old City lies the Temple Mount. There, in this tiny area, whose symbolic importance is inversely proportional to its geo­graphical dimension, one of the most atrocious archeological crimes of the modern era is taking place.

It all began when the Islamic Religious Authority (WAQF), currently under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, opened an «emergency exit» to one of the sev­eral mosques located on the historical Temple Mount a few months ago. In time, and with the help of bulldozers and trucks, workers dug a pit 1,250 square meters in area and 12 meters in depth near this original exit supposedly for the sake of renovations to the mosque, thus trans­forming the «exit» into a monumental entrance to the area of the mosque. During this construction process, the workers have systematically dumped piles of ancient relics from the First and Second Temple periods onto a 6,000-ton mountain of dirt in the Kidron Valley as if it were garbage, in the way someone would toss a McDonald’s hamburger wrapping.

This almost unbelievable act of Islamic sacrilege prompted an open letter addressed to the Israeli prime minister and signed by, among others, the mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, former mayor Teddy Kollek, writers Haim Gouri, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, professors, recipients of archeological prizes, and 82 members of the Knesset — ranging in ideology from Meretz to the NRP. The letter stated that «a serious act of irreparable archeological vandalism and destruction is being carried out without archeological supervision … this archeological crime is insufferable.»(2)

Haim Gouri, also a member of the Committee for the Protection of Antiquities at the Temple Mount, called for UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) to intervene. This call for help is particularly significant in light of Israel’s past experience with the UN agency. During the 1970s and 1980s, UNESCO repeatedly condemned Israel for various archeological excavations that, according to the Muslim world, were damaging the foundations of the mosques. At the time, UNESCO even went as far as to cut off financial aid to Israel.

That is why the current indifference of UNESCO, as well as that of the international media, various NGOs, and Western governments is simply too much to abide. As these prominent Israeli personalities pointed out in their public letter of protest, it would be inconceivable for a sim­ilar act of desecration to take place in areas of comparable historical importance, such as the Acropolis in Athens or the Forum in Rome — or, for that matter, in Mecca itself. Actually, had this pit been carved by Israel, and had the desecrated relics belonged to Muslim instead of Jewish history, World War III would no doubt have erupted.

One need only recall what happened at the same loca­tion a few years ago to realize that this statement is no exaggeration. In September 1996, the Netanyahu admin­istration opened a 2-meter-long exit at the end of a Hasmonean tunnel under the Western Wall. This event was denounced from Gaza to Bangladesh as a desecration of the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem, and a few hours later rallies against Israel and the «Judaization» of the City of David filled the streets of the Palestinian autonomous areas. In the ensuing riots, the Palestinian police joined the protesters, at times shooting at the Israeli police and army — with weapons they got from Israel in the framework of the peace process. After three days of fighting, 70 people had lost their lives and dozens had been wounded, mostly Palestinians.

Passions were further inflamed when the official Palestinian television station showed images of the corpses while describing the revolt as an Israeli «mas­sacre.» At Palestinian request, the Arab League met and condemned Israel, while the international media, unsur­prisingly, echoed the Palestinian account of events.

The present crime being committed by WAQF on the Mount has, of course, much more to do with the battle over the sovereignty of Jerusalem than with archeology. Nor is this careless, even hostile Islamic attitude toward historical treasure surprising. The entire Palestinian leadership is committed to «erasing» Jewish history from the area through its official media, school textbooks, or, as in the current case, by simply tossing into the garbage any shred of evidence pointing to a Jewish historical presence here.

Throughout the peace process, Israeli foreign policy has generally avoided adopting a systematic information campaign highlighting the historical Jewish link to Jerusalem or the moral dimension underlying such bond. That is to say, Israel could remind the world that the word «Jerusalem» appears 587 times in the Jewish Bible (its synonym, «Zion,» another 151), whereas it does not even appear once in the Koran; that Jerusalem was the capital of a Jewish kingdom and was never the capital of any other rule; that Muhammad attached religious value to Jerusalem with the sole intention of gaining Jewish sup­porters; and that Jews have been for millennia praying three times a day facing Jerusalem, whereas Muslims — even when they are in Jerusalem — pray facing Mecca.

Israel  could  also  remind  the world  that,  under Jordanian  rule, Jews were  forbidden   to  pray at  the Western Wall, that almost all the synagogues in the Old City were desecrated, and that tombstones of the old Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives were removed for  use in various construction projects (including the build­ing of latrines). Nor was Jerusalem that relevant for Muslims religiously under the Jordanian administration. As Daniel Pipes has recounted, the act of securing a bank loan, subscribing to telephone service, or registering a postal package required a trip to Amman in those days. Friday sermons were not transmitted from Al-Aqsa but from a minor mosque in Amman (by the way, these ser­mons were censored by the Jordanian authorities, a restriction Israel rescinded when it reunified the city in 1967). Nor was Jordan’s policy toward Jerusalem atypical. Save a few occasions when King Hussein deigned to visit Jerusalem, no Arab leader paid a visit to the Holy City dur­ing 1948-1967. Not even in the 1964 PLO Charter, Daniel Pipes reminds us, can one find mention of Jerusalem. (3)

No, only after Israel captured the city in 1967 did the Arab world start to «miss» Jerusalem. It was recently reported, for instance, that King Fahd told the American president he wants to pray at Al-Aqsa mosque before he dies. This is reminiscent of the late Syrian president who, as talks regarding the possible return of the Golan Heights were in full swing, told President Clinton that he wanted to swim in Lake Kineret. Perhaps these declarations of intent and sudden interest in Israeli sites reflect a potential materialization of one of the promises of the «New Middle East»: the promotion of regional tourism. Accordingly, we shouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow we hear that Saddam Hussein wants to eat a falafel in Tel Aviv or Colonel Qaddafi wishes to surf off the coast of Eilat…

In any case, this extreme act of Islamic disrespect toward Jewish history and the lack of elementary Palestinian sensitivity toward its peace partner in them­selves constitute the basis upon which Israel should define its Jerusalem policy. Since September 1993, Yasir Arafat has adopted a position on Jerusalem and has not moved one inch from it. Perhaps the time has arrived for Israel to do the same, and for once to set and respect a red line in this peace process — a line which, incidentally, enjoys a significant national consensus.

Notes:

  1. Including Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Cyprus, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen.
  2. Ha’aretz/ 11June 2000.
  3. Daniel Pipes, «Whose Jerusalem,» The Jerusalem Post, 19 July 2000.